‘What you talking about, Dean?’ He could hear her puffing on a cigarette, and was grateful she was sober enough to recognise who she was talking to. Peggy Cox had managed to come off the drugs ten years earlier, but had replaced her habit with a fondness for cheap vodka.

‘The police just came. They found her this morning in the river.’

Dean wiped away the tears that ran down his face as he sat in the darkness of his bedroom. When the police left, he’d gone in there, closed the door and pulled his curtains closed.

‘Nan?’ Dean said, listening to his grandmother cough and splutter.

‘Yes, give me a minute.’ She continued to wheeze down the phone and Dean wondered if there might be another death in the family that day.

Janet and her mother had not been close, and they hardly saw one another, but since she had cleaned up her act – enough to stop the drugs at least – Peggy had tried in her own way to build a relationship with Dean. She would send him five pounds in a card every year for his birthday and she had visited them twice. Dean knew how much his mother had despised Peggy, but now she was dead, he didn’t have anyone else to turn to.

‘I need you, Nan.’ The boy felt utterly alone.

‘Have you got enough money for the train?’ she asked, still puffing on her smoke.

‘I can probably get it.’ He had a friend he could ask, if the jar in the kitchen didn’t have enough change in it.

‘Good lad. You remember my address?’

‘Not exactly,’ he admitted, still sniffing, ‘I’ll get a pen.’

‘Number twenty,’ she said, the fag hanging out of her mouth, ‘Hall Road. Nearest station is Dartford. You’ll have to work out how to get ’ere from yours.’

‘Thanks, Nan.’ Dean felt a little relief.

‘No bother, but I ain’t got much in the fridge, so don’t be expectin’ a lot.’ His relief evaporated.

‘I won’t.’

‘Be a good boy and bring me some fags, and if you’ve got any drink lying around, no point leavin’ it behind to go to waste.’

‘Okay, Nan,’ he said, as Peggy put down the phone without saying goodbye, let alone anything to comfort him.